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Re: We have a new Law Dean

Postby tristatecoog » Mon Jun 06, 2022 4:42 pm

For the 2021 entering class, TCU had a 54% acceptance rate and 24% yield. SMU had a 53% acceptance rate and 19% yield. However, SMU is competing with a higher level of universities for its students. TCU had an SAT range of 1140-1345 and ACT range of 26-31 vs. 1350-1490 and 31-34 for SMU. Top 10% grads were 40% for TCU and 52% for SMU.

Graduation rates from the 2015 class were 83% at TCU and 82% at SMU.

TCU's president has done a terrific job but they're still quite a bit below the quality of SMU's student body.

++++++++++++++
https://law.missouri.edu/person/lyrissa-lidsky/
Dean Lidsky at Missouri was apparently a finalist for the UT Law dean role. However, that role went to UT's current associate dean for academic affairs. UT also went "down the hall" to hire its dean at McCombs a few years ago. Would SMU have hired Lyrissa Lidsky from Missou? She's now gone back to Florida. Who cares where she went to college? The A&M Law Dean went to Princeton and then Yale Law but was most recently the named Professor of Private International Law and Director of the Center on Federalism and Intersystemic Governance at Emory.

In the business school, Dean Myers seems a bit goofy while Niemi was a bit arrogant, which is more in line with b-school deans. However, apparent goofiness aside, Cox is starting a $140M construction project to transform the infrastructure. That should further boost its standing. My son considered FSU for b-school but they've struggled to raise $80M for a new building despite the state pitching in half the funds.

The new dorms at SMU were constructed in 2014. Hopefully the two year residency requirement will help boost the graduation rate. There's a new graduate research college with the Memphis chairperson to help boost SMU to Carnegie R1.
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Re: We have a new Law Dean

Postby gostangs » Mon Jun 06, 2022 6:05 pm

tristatecoog wrote:For the 2021 entering class, TCU had a 54% acceptance rate and 24% yield. SMU had a 53% acceptance rate and 19% yield. However, SMU is competing with a higher level of universities for its students. TCU had an SAT range of 1140-1345 and ACT range of 26-31 vs. 1350-1490 and 31-34 for SMU. Top 10% grads were 40% for TCU and 52% for SMU.

Graduation rates from the 2015 class were 83% at TCU and 82% at SMU.

TCU's president has done a terrific job but they're still quite a bit below the quality of SMU's student body.

++++++++++++++
https://law.missouri.edu/person/lyrissa-lidsky/
Dean Lidsky at Missouri was apparently a finalist for the UT Law dean role. However, that role went to UT's current associate dean for academic affairs. UT also went "down the hall" to hire its dean at McCombs a few years ago. Would SMU have hired Lyrissa Lidsky from Missou? She's now gone back to Florida. Who cares where she went to college? The A&M Law Dean went to Princeton and then Yale Law but was most recently the named Professor of Private International Law and Director of the Center on Federalism and Intersystemic Governance at Emory.

In the business school, Dean Myers seems a bit goofy while Niemi was a bit arrogant, which is more in line with b-school deans. However, apparent goofiness aside, Cox is starting a $140M construction project to transform the infrastructure. That should further boost its standing. My son considered FSU for b-school but they've struggled to raise $80M for a new building despite the state pitching in half the funds.

The new dorms at SMU were constructed in 2014. Hopefully the two year residency requirement will help boost the graduation rate. There's a new graduate research college with the Memphis chairperson to help boost SMU to Carnegie R1.
tristatecoog wrote:For the 2021 entering class, TCU had a 54% acceptance rate and 24% yield. SMU had a 53% acceptance rate and 19% yield. However, SMU is competing with a higher level of universities for its students. TCU had an SAT range of 1140-1345 and ACT range of 26-31 vs. 1350-1490 and 31-34 for SMU. Top 10% grads were 40% for TCU and 52% for SMU.

Graduation rates from the 2015 class were 83% at TCU and 82% at SMU.

TCU's president has done a terrific job but they're still quite a bit below the quality of SMU's student body.

++++++++++++++
https://law.missouri.edu/person/lyrissa-lidsky/
Dean Lidsky at Missouri was apparently a finalist for the UT Law dean role. However, that role went to UT's current associate dean for academic affairs. UT also went "down the hall" to hire its dean at McCombs a few years ago. Would SMU have hired Lyrissa Lidsky from Missou? She's now gone back to Florida. Who cares where she went to college? The A&M Law Dean went to Princeton and then Yale Law but was most recently the named Professor of Private International Law and Director of the Center on Federalism and Intersystemic Governance at Emory.

In the business school, Dean Myers seems a bit goofy while Niemi was a bit arrogant, which is more in line with b-school deans. However, apparent goofiness aside, Cox is starting a $140M construction project to transform the infrastructure. That should further boost its standing. My son considered FSU for b-school but they've struggled to raise $80M for a new building despite the state pitching in half the funds.

The new dorms at SMU were constructed in 2014. Hopefully the two year residency requirement will help boost the graduation rate. There's a new graduate research college with the Memphis chairperson to help boost SMU to Carnegie R1.


You can fairly criticize Turner for a bunch of things - but making the statement that TCU and Baylor are our peers is just silly wrong. We are well above them in all metrics. Also we are back ahead of TCU in our endowment as well - and very much ahead of them in endowment per student which is what matters.

That said i think we are overdue for a change and hope the BOT is in that process. nobody should be in charge of a university for more than 20 years. We should be way more focused on our endowment size and should have been so for years instead of picking out brick colors and trying to win some race for most number of new buildings. We are 1 Billion below where we should be in endowment for a university of our location and size. Also we are at least 1,500 smaller than we should be - need to get to 8k - 8,500 undergrads. Our brand is too small for our market and we run the risk of turning back into a sleepy liberal arts school.
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Re: We have a new Law Dean

Postby SoCal_Pony » Mon Jun 06, 2022 9:49 pm

gostangs wrote:You can fairly criticize Turner for a bunch of things - but making the statement that TCU and Baylor are our peers is just silly wrong.


Oh i don’t know about that gostangs.
Per US News……SMU vs Baylor

Law schools are both ranked # 58
Undergraduate Engineering schools are both ranked #114
Graduate Engineering schools are both ranked #121
Schools of Physics are both ranked #121
Schools of Mathematics are both ranked #102
Schools of Psychology are both ranked #140
Schools of Statistics, we rank #75, Baylor #81
Schools of Chemistry, we rank #140, Baylor #81

I’m sure we’re better in Business & Arts, and yes, we are the better overall school, but the whole point of this was succinctly stated by deucetz, “SMU should stop competing with Baylor and set its eyes on being compared to Emory & Vanderbilt.” Or a post i did here on PFs a decade ago entitled ‘Does Dallas Deserve More than SMU’

I stand by all this, and duecetz had some excellent posts on this thread.

Many moons ago, I could have attended any school in the state of Texas. For me, there were only 3 choices, SMU, Rice or UT, and in the end, really only 1, SMU. I have zero regrets, but i am also somewhat disappointed in my alma mater.
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Re: We have a new Law Dean

Postby Mustangs_Maroons » Tue Jun 07, 2022 12:13 am

I’m also disappointed in SMU’s lack of aspirations. If we would have had better leadership during these last 25 years, SMU could have been a top 30/40 nationally-ranked school, and have top 25 programs in both business and law, with an endownment of $3bn+. We’re nowhere close. On top of that, we’re on the outside looking in at the college realignment game. We have to look up to TCU and Baylor on the athletic front. I can’t imagine how anyone could be satisfied by our academic and athletic standings.
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Re: We have a new Law Dean

Postby tristatecoog » Tue Jun 07, 2022 9:30 am

These colleges have made the most progress in US News since 2009 (or late 1990s in USC's case):
Northeastern (47 spot improvement)
TCU (+29)
USC (17)
Boston Univ (17)
American (7)
Pepperdine (6)

These have dropped the most since the late 1990s (Tulsa's drop is since 2009-10):
Rochester -4
Tulane -4
Tufts -4
Emory -5
Syracuse -7
Brandeis -12
Lehigh -15
George Washington -17
Tulsa -53

In this ranking list, SMU wasn't considered in the top 57 from 1983-07:
https://publicuniversityhonors.com/2017 ... 1983-2007/

SMU is unchanged over the last couple years compared with 2009-10. The same is true for Boston College which has consistently been 30 spots higher. Both SMU and BC had higher rankings from 2012-17 but different methodology (?) pushed them higher by a few spots to current. Also impacting SMU was the addition of Villanova, Santa Clara and LMU to national rankings. Both Villanova and Santa Clara rank higher than SMU while LMU is comparable.
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Re: We have a new Law Dean

Postby SoCal_Pony » Tue Jun 07, 2022 10:44 am

and to add insult to injury, over the past 30 years, outside of Silicon Valley, no area in America has grown remotely as much as Dallas. (atlanta & phoenix get honorable mention)

We’ve truly stunk at this ‘vision’ thing.
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Re: We have a new Law Dean

Postby AfricanMustang » Tue Jun 07, 2022 2:39 pm

SoCal_Pony wrote:and to add insult to injury, over the past 30 years, outside of Silicon Valley, no area in America has grown remotely as much as Dallas. (atlanta & phoenix get honorable mention)

We’ve truly stunk at this ‘vision’ thing.


True, but the demographic dividends will pay off in decades.
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Re: We have a new Law Dean

Postby AfricanMustang » Tue Jun 07, 2022 2:44 pm

deucetz wrote:
AfricanMustang wrote:
How is he a step up from Cox Dean? I simply meant that Jason Nance has a more prestigious educational background (BA from Brigham Young University, PhD in Education Policy from Ohio State, and a JD from UPenn), and academic background as an associate dean from the University of Florida, Levin College of Law (currently ranked No. 21 from US News). Myers has a masters in International Business from the University of South Carolina, and a PhD from Michigan State University. Myers came from an unranked business school according to US News.


What do you mean SMU is not out fundraising TCU and Baylor? In 1995 when Turner came into office the SMU endowment was ranked 38, with 498,192 M. TCU was ranked 41 w/ 481,858 M, and Baylor ranked 67 w/ 340,764 M. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d97/d97t352.asp

As of 2019, SMU was ranked 65 at 1,607,333 M. TCU was 64 at 1,620,665 M, Baylor was 74 at 1,322,822 M. I didn't add 2022 numbers since National Center for Educations Statistics didn't list them yet, but TCU is still higher than SMU. One of the main jobs of the president is to increase the endowment and we are losing the battle against TCU during Turner's presidency. It has been difficult to find the amount that SMU's endowment distributes to the university, I think it's 4%. TCU & Baylor is 5%.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20 ... 333.90.asp



What metrics are you using to make that statement? Which metrics are we behind them? Save for Baylor which just joined Carnegie R1? As you mentioned Baylor has reached Carnegie R1. TCU now has a medical school, which will pay dividends to help it towards Carnegie R1. TCU has recently had a Rhodes Scholar. Beyond that, from 2018 to 2019, SMU's graduation rate is 78% and acceptance rate was 53%. Baylor's graduation rate is 77% and acceptance rate was 68%. TCU's graduation rate is 83% and acceptance rate was 48%.

Unless you can show otherwise, I think Turner has underperformed as a President during his 27 years at SMU.


In 1990, SMU’s endowment was ranked 31st in the nation, and in 1991 it was ranked 33rd rank, in 1992 it was 34, in 1993 and 1994, it was 37 and in 1995 it was 38. In 1997, it was ranked 45.

In 1990, TCU’s endowment was ranked 44st in the nation, and in 1991 it was ranked 40th. In 1997, it was ranked 37. As SMU slid 14 points in 7 years (Two points per year), TCU rose 7 points, a point each year.

In September 1995, R. Gerald Turner became SMU President. The slid in SMU’s endowment rank started before the Turner era, only that instead of sliding 2 points a year, its sliding 0.88 points a year.

As of June 30th 2021 (2022 Rank), SMU’s endowment was ranked 67th and TCU was 65th in nation. So if we choose for example 1997 as a reference point (Since the 1995 rank is as of June 30th 1994 and a result of decisions made in 1993), TCU has slid from #37 to #65 (Lost 28 points, 1,12 points a year), while SMU has slid from #45 to #67 (Lost 22 points, 0.88 points a year)

For reference, Rice’s endowment was #11 in 1990, #13 in 1997 and #20 in 2022 (Lost 7 points during same era era, 0.28 points a year)

https://www.nacubo.org/Research/2021/Hi ... Study-Data

https://www.nacubo.org/-/media/Nacubo/D ... -2022.ashx?
Last edited by AfricanMustang on Tue Jun 07, 2022 10:08 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: We have a new Law Dean

Postby tristatecoog » Tue Jun 07, 2022 5:40 pm

From 1997 to 2020, these were standouts:
+57 U of Iowa (#99 to 42)
+32 Penn State (#63 to 31)
+32 U of Illinois (#78 to 46)
+26 U of Washington (#59 to 33)
+26 Bowdoin (#91 to 65)
+24 Tufts (#83 to 59)
+22 Boston U (#65 to 43)

These were disappointing:
-151 Southwestern (#114 to 265) endowment has only grown from $276M to $289M
-52 Tulsa (#54 to 106)
-39 Case Western (#22 to 61)
-35 Wake Forest (#49 to 84)
-33 Delaware (#42 to 75)
-32 TCU (#37 to 69)
-25 SMU (#45 to 70)
-25 W&L (#46 to 71)
-21 Trinity U (#68 to 89)
-21 Lehigh (#61 to 82)
-11 Baylor (#70 to 81)

Publics have grown. So have some privates in Northeast. Texas privates haven't done well.
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Re: We have a new Law Dean

Postby SoCal_Pony » Tue Jun 07, 2022 7:20 pm

AA, i wouldn’t minimize the impact of Turner as the optimistic new face leading SMU out of the Ken Pye dark ages. Under those circumstances, a charming new President such as RGT should indeed get a boost in school contributions.

Big money donors have existed at SMU for decades & decades. The alumni i spoke to back then were mostly business grads and overwhelmingly negative towards Pye.

The greatest poster ever on PFs, Stallion, once said he personally researched the decline of SMU’s academic standards during the Pye years and that he found SMU simply stopped publishing key data presumably because it showed how far we had fallen.

I personally think RGT should have stayed here at most 10 years.
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Re: We have a new Law Dean

Postby gostangs » Tue Jun 07, 2022 10:08 pm

SoCal_Pony wrote:
gostangs wrote:You can fairly criticize Turner for a bunch of things - but making the statement that TCU and Baylor are our peers is just silly wrong.


Oh i don’t know about that gostangs.
Per US News……SMU vs Baylor

Law schools are both ranked # 58
Undergraduate Engineering schools are both ranked #114
Graduate Engineering schools are both ranked #121
Schools of Physics are both ranked #121
Schools of Mathematics are both ranked #102
Schools of Psychology are both ranked #140
Schools of Statistics, we rank #75, Baylor #81
Schools of Chemistry, we rank #140, Baylor #81

I’m sure we’re better in Business & Arts, and yes, we are the better overall school, but the whole point of this was succinctly stated by deucetz, “SMU should stop competing with Baylor and set its eyes on being compared to Emory & Vanderbilt.” Or a post i did here on PFs a decade ago entitled ‘Does Dallas Deserve More than SMU’

I stand by all this, and duecetz had some excellent posts on this thread.

Many moons ago, I could have attended any school in the state of Texas. For me, there were only 3 choices, SMU, Rice or UT, and in the end, really only 1, SMU. I have zero regrets, but i am also somewhat disappointed in my alma mater.


well just to be complete with the info - US News rankings (the only one anyone pays attention to):

UT - 38
Tulane - 42
SMU - 68
A&M - 68
Baylor 75
TCU - 83


The shocking thing for all of us is as much growth and success as we have seen in this state - there are only 2 universities in the top 50 in Texas. That is an embarrassment - and speaks to the general thinking by most of us that others will take care of it. These schools (all of them) will not rise relative to their peers until their endowments start moving up relative to their peers. Those of us with means need to put higher education much higher on our list of priorities. Figure out what you want to make better at SMU and dedicate yourself to it. Drive them crazy demanding excellence and figuring out what needs to be done to reach it. Most of all give and raise dough.

That said - we are miles head of Baylor and TCU in student quality. We are actually ahead of UT in average student quality although that is not necessarily fair since their admitted classes are 9X ours. Student quality isn't the only metric but it is hard to pass someone if your student quality is way below the other school.

Our issue is too many zombie "schools" inside our university. Our liberal arts students and perkins students are killing us. Should re tool them completely and probably drop Perkins entirely. We give up 20 percent of our real estate to a school that hurts us - and there are many other places for a religion focused education that makes more sense than SMU.
Cox is the reason we are as high as we are - followed by Meadows. Engineering is average and is in need of the most "boost". No idea why we started an education school. Paying 300k for a 4 year education degree that pays 50k doesn't seem like a great plan - and you could argue UNT does it better for about 25% of the cost.

All of us have a lot of work to do and we are all late getting to it. Don't complain about Pye/Turner/BOT/dean of the moment/ unless you have dug deep to try to make it better with either your time or your resources or both.
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Re: We have a new Law Dean

Postby AfricanMustang » Tue Jun 07, 2022 10:18 pm

SoCal_Pony wrote:AA, i wouldn’t minimize the impact of Turner as the optimistic new face leading SMU out of the Ken Pye dark ages. Under those circumstances, a charming new President such as RGT should indeed get a boost in school contributions.

Big money donors have existed at SMU for decades & decades. The alumni i spoke to back then were mostly business grads and overwhelmingly negative towards Pye.

The greatest poster ever on PFs, Stallion, once said he personally researched the decline of SMU’s academic standards during the Pye years and that he found SMU simply stopped publishing key data presumably because it showed how far we had fallen.

I personally think RGT should have stayed here at most 10 years.


That has always been my argument, that RGT provided stability to the university, the downfall stopped. I think the board, was just thankful for that. He has not improved the school in terms of rankings, endowment growth, etc, but I think the institutional stability that he provided and the astronomical growth in terms of increase in the university's real estate, and facilities should not be dismissed by his critics, few universities have grown in those areas as SMU has, and unfortunately these areas are capital intensive and eat away at resources that would otherwise be going to endowment growth.

Fortunately, I think you can only build so much facilities anyways, we can now begin to focus on our endowment growth, which passed the $2 billion mark as of June 30th 2021.
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Re: We have a new Law Dean

Postby tristatecoog » Wed Jun 08, 2022 10:03 am

https://www.smu.edu/Provost/IR/Statisti ... llment2020
Perkins doesn't have any undergraduate students and Simmons has 185, or 2.7%. I believe a big push by alums was for Simmons to expand to provide athlete friendly majors. Simmons has over 1100 graduate students. I wonder if they are paying full price or give out a lot of scholarship funds.

An easier way into UT-Austin is in its College of Liberal Arts and the School of Education.

I hear that it's challenging to get faculty from top-ranked universities that are in the Northeast or the West Coast due to Texas' politics. The new SMU law dean came from Florida. UT hired its from within. Rice's new president was its engineering dean. I haven't seen any surveys on that but it's anecdotal.
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Re: We have a new Law Dean

Postby SoCal_Pony » Wed Jun 08, 2022 10:11 am

AA, Yeah, I’m probably one of Turner’s harsher critics and even i think he was a decent hire. The question is how long should he stay.

Years 1 - 10, almost everyone is pleased with Turner, certainly an improvement over his predecessor.

Years 11-20, reasonable people can debate when he should depart. I say earlier, not later.

Years 20+, you have a screw loose if you support his continued stay. :lol:

and gostangs, i don’t exactly know what this means, but on SMU’s own website they list Aspirational Peer Schools such as Emory & USC as well as Cohort Peer Schools such as Baylor.

Regardless, if you are within 7 spots, as we are with Baylor, IMO that makes you a Peer School.

SMU is actually farther away from Syracuse, ranked #59 and 9 spots away. I still think most would consider SMU & Syracuse Peer Schools.
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Re: We have a new Law Dean

Postby SoCal_Pony » Wed Jun 08, 2022 10:17 am

tristatecoog wrote:https://www.smu.edu/Provost/IR/Statistics/FactSheets/Fall2020Facts/StudentEnrollment2020
Perkins doesn't have any undergraduate students and Simmons has 185, or 2.7%. I believe a big push by alums was for Simmons to expand to provide athlete friendly majors. Simmons has over 1100 graduate students. I wonder if they are paying full price or give out a lot of scholarship funds.

An easier way into UT-Austin is in its College of Liberal Arts and the School of Education.

I hear that it's challenging to get faculty from top-ranked universities that are in the Northeast or the West Coast due to Texas' politics. The new SMU law dean came from Florida. UT hired its from within. Rice's new president was its engineering dean. I haven't seen any surveys on that but it's anecdotal.


I would thumbs up you & deucetz on your posts here…good stuff
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